American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin ["I lock you in..."]

“I Lock You …” is part of a sonnet cycle, where each sonnet is titled “American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin.” The first line of each individual poem acts as the subtitle. Though all the sonnets share the common theme of what it means to be Black in contemporary America, the poems also function as standalone works. In “I Lock You …” the “you” in question possibly refers to the titular “past and future assassin.” However, the identity of this assassin is complex and ever-shifting. Even though the speaker in “I Lock You …” wastes no time coming to business with this “you,” telling them directly and urgently that “I lock you in an American sonnet,” the “you” itself remains slippery and elusive. Why does this “you” want to kill the speaker, not just in the past but in the future as well? The reader is given a series of complex and odd metaphors to unravel the identity of the “you”. The relationship between the speaker and the assassin is the subject of the poem and encompasses personal and political realities. Assuming the “you” is the assassin, the poem forces this assassin to consider the reality of the speaker, the intended victim.